


Lyra Falling

by olddarkmachine



Series: Stars On His Shoulder [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Can be read alone, M/M, Non-Explicit Sex, Porn with Feelings, a wee bit of angst but if you read with lyra waking it has a happy ending, but in that case it's open ended!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:42:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22601170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olddarkmachine/pseuds/olddarkmachine
Summary: “Why do you even like my freckles so much?” Keith asks, his quiet chuckle turning into a sharp gasp as Shiro tugs his knee up over his hip.“I just think they’re very fitting” he replies, continuing his exploration of Keith’s skin. Raising goosebumps along the invisible tracks of his touch, Shiro draws his slicked fingers over his rim, gently circling before pressing one inside.“What?” Keith asks, the question coming out jagged with the way his breath punches out of him as Shiro starts to work him open in earnest.“You were always meant to be amongst the stars,” he answers easily, as if it’s the simplest fact in the world.
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Series: Stars On His Shoulder [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1614559
Comments: 6
Kudos: 54





	Lyra Falling

**Author's Note:**

> This one is the NSFW companion to my other zine piece, Lyra Waking! You don’t gotta read both to enjoy them separately BUT I did write them so that they are foils to each other so you should give them both a read just because I’m really proud of them together lol THAT BEING SAID, this one is set before the war, so it’s set before Lyra Waking.

Moonlight turns the room silver, casting its spartan furnishings in a bright glow as Keith reaches a trembling hand to cup Shiro’s cheek. The same silver gilds his skin, clinging to it with the very luminescence that he’d often found himself dreaming of during their time out in space.

Through it all, they’d chased the light of countless moons, but none of those had ever compared to the brilliance of Earth’s. 

Of course, maybe Keith was biased.

After all, he had always been able to draw comparisons between the moon and Shiro’s stare.

“Hey,” Shiro breathes, voice a tepid mix of the night and curiosity as he presses his cheek further into Keith’s palm. It burns as Shiro traps his hand beneath his own, keeping it held there as his stare carves brilliant lines across Keith’s face.

“What’s wrong?”

Keith knows he shouldn’t be surprised by the question. It might be sudden, but it isn’t unexpected. Even without saying anything at all, Shiro has always been able to tell when something is on his mind.

For better or for worse, he’s always known him better than anyone.

Better, Keith suspects, than he even knows himself.

Drawing his thumb carefully over the crest of Shiro’s cheek, he watches as its path travels just shy of the raised scar that cuts across his face.

It’s an inescapable reminder of how everything had changed, and yet, Keith can’t help but love it. 

The raised line of flesh meant Shiro was alive. That even with all the Galra had stolen from him, he had survived and he had come home. 

Come home to him.

It’s a selfish kind of love, and Keith knows that, but he rarely allows himself a moment to be selfish.

Since it’s their last night before what could very well be the end, he figures he can make a special concession.

“Nothing,” he tries, but the word sticks obstinately in his throat. Swelling to the point of pain, it chokes him until the corners of his eyes prick with heat as he tries to gasp any air around the obstruction.

Of everything they’d faced up until now, Keith can’t believe that it was something as simple as a word that would be his undoing. 

“Keith,” Shiro sighs, the breath of his name brushed with a quiet plea in the face of his meager lie. 

Of course he’d seen through it. Keith was a good liar, but never with Shiro. 

Sucking his bottom lip between his teeth, Keith holds his stare as a silence shudders over the room. Thick and pressing, and bigger than themselves, it shakes him down to his core. There was so much to be said, yet so little of it would actually find its way up through his throat and off the tip of his tongue.

Keith’s chest aches with the tempest of every goodbye he never had the chance to say, and seemingly couldn’t say, as he tears his gaze away.

Instead, he fixes his stare on the emptied bookcase that sits diagonally from Shiro’s shoulder.

It had once held bits and fragments of themselves, each one coming together like puzzle pieces that had made up a home. Photographs, dog tags, small reminders of a past, and hopeful glimpses of their future had lined its shelves.

Now, with each and every piece packed up in boxes, all that was left were the various shapes they’d left outlined in dust. 

Everything was tucked away in a lonely storage unit, left to no one in the event that they didn’t return. 

Keith knows it should be sad, but mostly it just feels hollow. They’d both left their lives behind enough times to lose the sentimentality of material things.

At least, that’s what Keith had fought to make himself believe. 

It wouldn’t hurt so much, he thinks, if he could just bring himself to not care about the frame with their Kerberos launch photo or the silver dog tags that now sat at the bottom of a cardboard box.

Yet he feels their absence bury deep into the center of his chest like a jagged reminder that the life they had begun to cultivate was nothing more than an illusion.

They’d only just returned to Earth, and something about the nostalgic coloring of the desert had eased Keith into that domestic peace of mind. The future he’d always yearned for was easier to picture with his feet on the hot, cracked ground where everything had begun.

Hope was there, almost in his grasp, but now he was trying to press it back into the small, compartmentalized space at the back of his mind. Only now, it had grown far too big, overtaking him with the sudden rush of loss for something he only wished he could have.

“I can’t lose you again.” 

Keith’s own admission shocks him, setting his eyes wide as he turns them from the lonely bookcase back to Shiro. With his stare turned bright by a slice of moonlight through their blinds, Shiro’s gaze is inhuman as he looks up at him.

Carefully, as if he might break, Shiro pulls Keith’s hand from where it rests against his cheek, down to his chest and right above his heart. Pressed beneath Shiro’s metallic palm, he can feel the steady, strong beat of his heart.

“This is war, Keith,” Shiro starts, “and I can’t promise you won’t. Just like you can’t promise me that I won’t lose you.”

Opening his mouth to deny the possibility, Shiro cuts him off with a gentle shake of his head. Raising his other hand, he presses his palm flat to Keith’s chest where his own heart beats in tandem.

“But right now, I’m here,” Shiro breathes, dragging fire along Keith’s skin as he draws his hand up toward his neck. He only stops when his fingers find his nape, tangling in his hair as he thumbs at the square of Keith’s jaw.

“And you’re here.”

Gently, Shiro pulls him close until their lips are just barely brushing, turning the air between them into a shared breath.

“Let’s not think about tomorrow,” he whispers. The words, quiet and trapped between them, strike down Keith’s spine and make him shiver. 

For a near imperceptible moment, Keith allows himself to trail his gaze over the flushing bow of Shiro’s lips, still slightly parted around his statement, before he presses forward to kiss him. 

Colored in desperation and tasting bittersweet, he holds Shiro close as he opens into it, silently praying that it’s able to convey everything he can’t bring himself to say.

A goodbye would feel like an omen or a curse, but war wasn’t kind and nothing was guaranteed with the stars leading their fate. Goodbyes were nothing more than the guillotine hanging over their heads.

This kiss, one born of love, devotion and the very stardust that has built itself into his bones, is the only goodbye that Keith will allow either of them to say. 

Breathing Shiro in as he arches up into his touch, Keith pulls at him, scratching red tracks along his shoulder blades in an attempt to bring him closer still. 

It’s such a silly thing, how badly he wants to keep him pressed to his chest forever, he thinks as he licks his tongue along the back of Shiro’s teeth. 

Twin moans light their bedroom with a feverish glow as Shiro rolls his hips languidly. The movement brushes his hardness at Keith’s hip, and it sends static rolling through him.

“Keith,” Shiro breathes his name quietly, setting it in a soft shell of a tone that is only meant for him. 

A tone that may have only ever been meant for him, Keith thinks.

No, he prays, catching his name between his teeth as he nips at Shiro’s kiss swollen bottom lip.

It isn’t until they’re both breathless and endlessly hungry for the other that they pull apart. 

Shiro’s palm sears his skin where it still rests against his cheek, and his stare etches a brand deep into his heart as they hold each other’s gazes.

Keith feels his thumb slowly track down from his cheekbone towards his bottom lip. The pad slides easily across his skin, collecting the the slick there before coming to rest against the seam of his lips.

I love you, Keith thinks as he presses a chaste kiss to it.

I love you, Shiro’s responding smile says back. 

Mouth pulling wide beneath the press of Shiro’s thumb, Keith rolls beneath him to reach toward their nightstand and the small plastic bottle that’s balanced on its corner. 

As his fingers close around it, Keith feels a soft, reverent touch at his shoulder. 

“Have I ever told you that you wear Lyra on your shoulder?” Shiro muses as he replaces his worshipping touch with the soft brush of his lips over the collection of freckles that sit on Keith’s shoulder blade.

“You have.” Keith can’t help but laugh lowly as he presses up into the kiss.

“How many times are you going to tell me about it?” he continues as Shiro takes the bottle, nuzzling at the freckled constellation one last time before leaning away to let Keith roll back over and look at him.

Moonlight catches Shiro’s eyes as he begins to coat his fingers, leaving Keith’s question unanswered until his smile turns devilish.

“As many times as it takes,” he says, snapping the bottle shut and leaning back over him. Lightning prickles and cracks across Keith’s skin as Shiro peppers lazy kisses along his collarbone, all the while tracing fingers along his thigh. 

“Why do you even like my freckles so much?” Keith asks, his quiet chuckle turning into a sharp gasp as Shiro tugs his knee up over his hip.

“I just think they’re very fitting” he replies, continuing his exploration of Keith’s skin. Raising goosebumps along the invisible tracks of his touch, Shiro draws his slicked fingers over his rim, gently circling before pressing one inside.

“What?” Keith asks, the question coming out jagged with the way his breath punches out of him as Shiro starts to work him open in earnest. 

“You were always meant to be amongst the stars,” he answers easily, as if it’s the simplest fact in the world.

Maybe, to him, it is.

“I was always meant to be with you,” Keith grits out, rolling his hips down into Shiro’s hand as he adds another finger. 

It’s his own truth. One made up of all his stars. Every molecule of his being had always screamed out for Shiro in a way that had only ever made sense.

Shiro was Shiro, and he was Keith, and they had always been meant to be with each other. More than that, they were both meant to be together, trekking the universe, no matter how badly it tried to tear them apart.

An intrusive thought of the coming days presses against the growing haze in Keith’s bloodstream in a bid to crash him back down to Earth.

Almost as if he knows, Shiro brushes his nose across the vein at his throat before biting softly. It pushes back against the looming feeling and masks the slide of a third finger.

“Yes,” he breathes in agreement, the puff of sudden air cooling where he bit, “and I was always meant to be with you.”

Sliding his hands from Shiro’s shoulders up the sides of his neck, Keith cups his jaw between his palms and pulls him up to gaze at him. A blush, bright and flustered, colors Shiro’s cheeks as his lips part around a quiet breath and he gently slips his fingers out of him.

“I love you,” Keith whispers, silently praying that it isn’t the last time. Drawing his thumbs over the apples of Shiro’s cheeks, he feels wet warmth catch on his skin as Shiro pushes closer, lining himself against his entrance.

“I love you, Keith,” Shiro says, pressing himself in. The slow drag makes Keith moan. It’s loud, almost painful, as it tears from deep within his chest before Shiro soothes the sound with an all consuming kiss that ignites the air around them.

The darkness of the room is punctuated by the soft sounds of their gasping breaths as they move against each other. Every constellation that Keith has ever learned paint themselves across the back of his eyelids as Shiro moves against him. They all glow brighter and brighter, pulsing with the flaring rush of pleasure that threatens to push him towards a cataclysmic event.

In the distance of the far edges of the universe, he swears he can hear the faint sound of his name as he clutches Shiro. 

_Keith_ , he hears as he mouths at Shiro’s throat.

 _Keith, Keith, Keith_ , like a mantra. 

The stars explode, one-by-one, charring his bones as he arches up with a gasp that shatters the haze around him before his release ribbons between them. It leaves everything else almost painfully clear as he feels Shiro shudder against him, finding his own brush of pleasure shortly after.

“Keith,” Shiro sighs one last time before dropping a kiss to the corner of his mouth as he carefully pulls out. 

The loss of contact lasts for just a breath as Shiro shuffles slightly, realigning their bodies and pulling him in close. Humming a small nonsensical tune to himself, Shiro presses an ear to Keith’s chest. 

They fit together this way, perfectly. The room goes quiet, save for the soft sounds of their breaths as they lay together, drinking in the moonlight.

“I can’t lose you, either,” Shiro admits into the even silence, carefully brushing the words over Keith’s heart. 

It’s a small admission, almost lost to the shadowy corners of their room, but he feels it as it lands its sharp point in his skin. Pulling Shiro closer to his chest, Keith leans in to press a kiss to his crown. A distant thought tells him that they should clean up, but he can’t bring himself to pull away as he speaks into Shiro’s hair.

“You won’t.” 

It’s a promise, heavy and unbreakable, captured within the hush of his voice. One that he knows isn’t even in his hands to keep.

It was all up to fate.

And there, with Shiro pressed into his chest, mumbling a soft sound of sleepy acquiescence, Keith can’t help but pray that fate lets him keep it.

***


End file.
